“I thought all the grassfires would be hurting you and Rosethorn,” Sandry remarked as she traced a metallic thread in the pattern of stitches.
Briar shook his head. “The grass is mostly dead.” He’d left Rosethorn, his teacher of plant-magic, calmly discussing next year’s crops with the duke and Lady Inoulia. “Their drought killed most of it weeks ago. And the top burns so fast that the fire moves on, and the roots and seeds are fine, still.”
“Oh,” Sandry murmured, not really listening. “What flower is this? On these jackets?”
“It looks like a crocus. Why?” He wasn’t vexed with her for not listening. He knew what she was like when she saw anything unusual done with cloth.
“Just curious. Here, look at this thread. Is it real gold, or—”
Sandry, Briar. Daja’s magical voice made them jump with surprise. Heat jumped from Sandry’s finger to race down the metal thread, melting it as the silk around it charred. She gaped at the mess. She had no fire or lightning magic—that was Daja and Tris! How did she melt that thread? And what could she say to the jacket’s owner?
I’ll find the smith, Briar told Daja. The sense of contact with her faded. “C’mon,” he urged Sandry.
“I burned it!” she hissed, grabbing his sleeve and pointing out the scorch marks. “I was touching it when Daja reached us and—and heat came out of me!”
He scratched an elbow. “All the more reason to leave before the owner sees it.”
Sandry shook her head. “It’s my fault the jacket is ruined. I have to make amends.”
“Why?” he asked reasonably. “Nobody saw you—”
“I saw me,” she said flatly.
The boy stared at her. “Nobles,” he finally remarked. “You don’t see me having a conscience.” He looked at his jailhouse tattoos, black X’s stained deep into the webs between his thumbs and forefingers. “It just confuses things.”
“They’re coming back,” she said with a nod toward the creek. The men had finished their gossip, and the jacket’s owner was approaching. “You’d better go find the smith.”
“You expect me to leave a mate in a pinch,” he replied scornfully. “Don’t you see me nice!”
“It’s not that,” protested Sandry. She stood up straight, shoulders back, chin up, and folded her hands neatly in front of her.
The man who had left his jacket there halted with a frown. “Excuse me, my lady,” he said, reaching for his property. He said nothing to Briar, but kept an eye on him.
“I ruined your jacket,” Sandry told him, her upper lip quivering. “I can’t explain it, but you had a metal thread in the embroidery, and it melted. What repayment would be fair?”
“You melted a thread,” he repeated, one black eyebrow raised. “I don’t see a fire here.” He was a handsome young man, with the long black hair and slanted black eyes common to these mountains. The hint of a smile twitched the side of his mouth.
“Magically,” replied Sandry. “I’m pretty sure it was magically. The design was so beautiful, and now it’s scorched and that thread is gone.”
There were muffled chuckles from the warrior’s friends. He examined the design. “Looks like a kind of spiral fern, doesn’t it?” he asked his companions, showing them the scorched mark. “One just unfurling.”
Briar had to admit, the design didn’t look ruined. A thin, spiky burn mark wound about the crocus and across the bands of color that radiated from it. Someone could have etched the mark in deliberately.
“Doesn’t seem damaged at all, my lady,” said one of the rider’s friends.
Sandry gulped. “I could make a new design, and replace that,” she told the jacket’s owner. “It would take me a while, but if we’re in these mountains for a few weeks …”
He shrugged the garment on. “I like it as it is.” Picking up her hand, he bowed and kissed her fingers. “I’ll be the envy of my village, with your mark on me.”
Sandry blushed crimson. The rider winked at Briar and walked away.
A few of the other warriors stayed. One removed his jacket and offered it to the girl. “Would you do mine?”
She shook her head without looking up. “I don’t know how I did it—and if I did, I don’t know that next time I wouldn’t burn the whole thing up.”
The riders looked at each other and shrugged. “If you figure it out, I’d like to know,” said the one who’d offered his jacket. The men bowed to her and went off to find their horses.
Sandry looked at Briar. “I need to find an answer to this accident,” she told him. “Otherwise, what’s to say I won’t destroy something?”
After pointing out the well to Polyam, Tris had returned to her seat and her book, still bristling over the Trader’s behavior. She was just beginning to calm down when a shadow fell over her page. Looking up, she saw Polyam. “Now what?”
“Our children have better manners,” the woman said tartly as she thumped the ground with her staff, trying to find a better place to stand.
“Then go bother one of them,” muttered Tris. She went back to her reading.
One end of the staff—the dirty end, she thought indignantly—tapped the pages of her book. “I have a name: Polyam. Use it, and tell me something, xurdin girl. If you knew one who was not a Trader—who was trangshi—would you also know why?”